A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] eBook

Below the nobility we find large numbers of dependent
people; modern Chinese scholars call them frequently
“slaves” and speak of a “slave society”.
There is no doubt that at least some farmers were “free
farmers”; others were what we might call “serfs”:
families in hereditary group dependence upon some
noble families and working on land which the noble
families regarded as theirs. Families of artisans
and craftsmen also were hereditary servants of noble
families—­a type of social organization
which has its parallels in ancient Japan and in later
India and other parts of the world. There were
also real slaves: persons who were the personal
property of noblemen. The independent states around
the Shang state also had serfs. When the Shang
captured neighbouring states, they re-settled the
captured foreign aristocracy by attaching them as
a group to their own noblemen. The captured serfs
remained under their masters and shared their fate.
The same system was later practised by the Chou after
their conquest of the Shang state.

The conquests of late Shang added more territory to
the realm than could be coped with by the primitive
communications of the time. When the last ruler
of Shang made his big war which lasted 260 days against
the tribes in the south-east, rebellions broke out
which lead to the end of the dynasty, about 1028 B.C.
according to the new chronology (1122 B.C. old chronology).

ANTIQUITY

Chapter Three

THE CHOU DYNASTY (c. 1028-257 B.C.)

1 Cultural origin of the Chou and end of the Shang
dynasty

The Shang culture still lacked certain things that
were to become typical of “Chinese” civilization.
The family system was not yet the strong patriarchal
system of the later Chinese. The religion, too,
in spite of certain other influences, was still a
religion of agrarian fertility. And although
Shang society was strongly stratified and showed some
tendencies to develop a feudal system, feudalism was
still very primitive. Although the Shang script
was the precursor of later Chinese script, it seemed
to have contained many words which later disappeared,
and we are not sure whether Shang language was the
same as the language of Chou time. With the Chou
period, however, we enter a period in which everything
which was later regarded as typically “Chinese”
began to emerge.

During the time of the Shang dynasty the Chou formed
a small realm in the west, at first in central Shensi,
an area which even in much later times was the home
of many “non-Chinese” tribes. Before
the beginning of the eleventh century B.C. they must
have pushed into eastern Shensi, due to pressures
of other tribes which may have belonged to the Turkish
ethnic group. However, it is also possible that
their movement was connected with pressures from Indo-European
groups. An analysis of their tribal composition
at the time of the conquest seems to indicate that